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But I am uncertain that Sayaka was a mahou shoujo in every timeline...

yep, we were only shown Puella Magi Sayaka in TL3 and TL5. It seems she was not involbed in the first two timelines, and in timeline 4 both her AND Madoka stayed out of the fray.. at least until Madoka managed to roam into WN's barrier somehow (now who let her out of the shelter THAT TIME?! ).
There are a lot of questions to how the team re-gathered... Normally, we'd just happily and idly toss speculahs back and forth, but the possibility of Oriko coming and explaining at least some of the details are a strong exciter here.

Assuming you're using this as a point to suggest changing feelings for Kyosuke, I'm not convinced that it flies.

no,no, her being a mahou shoujo has nothing to do with her feelings towards kyousuke. I was just talking about both things, even mixing them. And you are right, my bad. Sayaka knew him before Madoka... she mentions that, right? so yep, that wouldn't have changed.

I need to watch the show again. I wan't to confirm the feeling I had that each timeline was slightly different regarding the group. For one, madoka seemed to be getting more and more powerful and two, not all girls were always present.. might be wrong though

no,no, her being a mahou shoujo has nothing to do with her feelings towards kyousuke. I was just talking about both things, even mixing them. And you are right, my bad. Sayaka knew him before Madoka... she mentions that, right? so yep, that wouldn't have changed.

I need to watch the show again. I wan't to confirm the feeling I had that each timeline was slightly different regarding the group. For one, madoka seemed to be getting more and more powerful and two, not all girls were always present.. might be wrong though

You're not wrong, at least it doesn't appear so. In timeline 1 the only Puella Magi we see are Mami and Madoka (with Homura as their de facto cheering section ). Timeline 2 is the same, with the difference of Homura joining them formally. Timeline 3 is the only one where all five of them being a team is confirmed; who knows why Kyoko was there though, since the main timeline showed that her reasons for showing up were to replace Mami after her death. And timeline 4 was so glossed over that they could all (barring Madoka) have been Puella Magi together and we just didn't see it; who knows.

We have no absolute certainty on the attendance rate of the girls, though, as far as I know.

Eh, I have trouble seeing how more than five timelines would work, for relatively simple reasons. First of all, we know beyond a shred of doubt that the timeline where Homura first healed her eyes if the fourth. That said, while it is technically possible that there were unseen timelines between that one and the one the timeline that the series takes place in, you then have to raise the question of why Madoka dreamed of the fourth timeline specifically. Whereas if the fourth was the last timeline before the series proper you can dismiss it as her dream being a remnant of the previous timeline ending and the new one starting; much easier to swallow that way.

Also, since main timeline Madoka is essentially shouldering the potential of five girls at once (her own, plus the four previous Madokas), her potential being God-like isn't much of a stretch. Plus it's kind of ironically in line with the staple MG trope of friendship is power; just, instead of five girls working together to accomplish anything, it's five copies of the same girl banding together to rip apart the universe.

In timeline 4 and start of 5, Homura basically hinted by saying I will repeated these events over and over again. It is implied that she has. Timeline 4 essentially is really showing time line 4 to final -1, during which Homura has tried and failed countless times and improved her skill and stamina through those repetitions. There was another hint in earlier episodes when Homura said she has seen countless witches and MGs die before. Then in ep 11, QB directly said Homura have repeated this month countless times on multiple worlds. Even if you take a grain of salt to QB's words, there was no reason for him to lie there as this current QB is stating his deduction to Homura, which Homura does not refute.

There is no way 5 time lines will produce enough power to allow Madoka to recreate the universe - that much should be pretty much common sense. Even with ability to kill WN starting from timeline 2, the power she gained in timeline 4 was only able to destroy the planet and thus did not increase drastically enough to allow a jump to godhood in the next timeline.

In timeline 4 and start of 5, Homura basically hinted by saying I will repeated these events over and over again. It is implied that she has. Timeline 4 essentially is really showing time line 4 to final -1, during which Homura has tried and failed countless times and improved her skill and stamina through those repetitions. There was another hint in earlier episodes when Homura said she has seen countless witches and MGs die before. Then in ep 11, QB directly said Homura have repeated this month countless times on multiple worlds. Even if you take a grain of salt to QB's words, there was no reason for him to lie there as this current QB is stating his deduction to Homura, which Homura does not refuse.

There is no way 5 time lines will produce enough power to allow Madoka to recreate the universe - that much should be pretty much common sense. Even with ability to kill WN starting from timeline 2, the power she gained in timeline 4 was only able to destroy the planet and thus did not increase drastically enough to allow a jump to godhood in the next timeline.

Homura's words about repeating over and over again seemed more to me like her making a resolution to do so than it seemed like her making a statement of fact. Still, you raised some good points that do hint at the idea of more timelines; although I will point out that the Kyubey quote in episode 11 is moot, since we are already well aware that he has zero knowledge of the other timelines and that he was just make an educated hypothesis. That Homura didn't argue his statement isn't necessarily telling either, since there was little reason for her to jump out and say, "Actually, this is only the fifth timeline."

All that said, I still disagree on more than five being absolutely necessary for Madoka's wish to be possible. First of all Homura needed no help at all (unless there really is truth to the theory of future Madoka helping her there) to make a wish that broke time, so to say that you need immeasurably more power than that to make a wish that transcends both time and space seems weird to me. In light of your compelling argument it's possible that she is indeed being influenced by more than four timelines, but I don't see that as being absolutely necessary to accomplish what she did.

One other argument about only 5 loops - count the number of timelines that Madoka (and later Homura) are shown as being tied up in. Even knowing that is a metaphor, I think it makes the point that there's more than 5 involved here.

mm dunno if it was exactly 5 time lines need'd ..but i think they are mostly to show the development on madoka's power:

1) she dies w/o defeating Walpurgis (she loses)
2) she dies defeating walpurgis (double K.O.)
3) she defeates walpurgis but she and Homura become corrupted (they used all their magic , barely "wins")
4) she defeates walpurgis in 1 shot (she "wins")
5) she "defeats" walpurgis in 1 shot.. and also changes the rules od the universe (godess ending)

personally i think that if there is a "gap" in the timelines it would be between TL 3 and 4 and i dont think it would be much of a gap..mebe 1 more TL showing a corrupted Madoka (and an "ok" Homura) after defeating Walpurgis?.

something that interested me is TL4 .. in that TL Madoka was strong enough to 1-shot walpurgis ..but she still turns into a witch.. so she is capable of defeating walpurgis since TL 2..but she has to burn herself out (corruption) in order to do so.. is of interest to me that in TL5 she ALSO becomes a witch (taking the despair/corruption from all the MGs)..but the nature of her wish prevents her to stay as a witch. (she said "my wish is to erase every witch.. if that is fulfilled i have no reason to feel despair" and proceed'd to destroy her own corrupted gem soul)

Do you really think Madoka as a normal magical girl was able to defeat WPGN? On timeline 1, we are not really told she died or defeated WPGN, but still it would be really hard for her to achieve that on timeline 1, so it's assumed she lost. I don't understand why it's assumed she won on timeline 2 and 3 though. We are not told she won in any of those timelines. Whether she loses or wins against WPGN is speculation in timeline 1, 2, and 3. We are only told she won in timeline 4.

Do you really think Madoka as a normal magical girl was able to defeat WPGN? On timeline 1, we are not really told she died or defeated WPGN, but still it would be really hard for her to achieve that on timeline 1, so it's assumed she lost. I don't understand why it's assumed she won on timeline 2 and 3 though. We are not told she won in any of those timelines. Whether she loses or wins against WPGN is speculation in timeline 1, 2, and 3. We are only told she won in timeline 4.

It must be mostly in how the aftermath of the fight plays out which, in every timeline, looks as though Walpurgisnacht isn't there anymore. Though it is as you say; we aren't outright told either way, and it is doubtful that Madoka could have pulled it off in the first timeline.

PS:
In TL1 the only hint we get is the color of the sky.. is a yellow/grey .. so likely she actually won that one (even tho the camare just shows a small portion of the sky, i had not noticed the sky color change before)

In TL2 the sky is once again yellow and the only distorcion you can see if the one cause by Madoka's witch form, so yeah they defeated the witch in TL2 too

in TL3 Madoka and Homura are talking after their sould gems became tained , the camera pans around and the witch is no where to be seen , also the sky is on a more normal color , no blue , but yellow.. like a setting sun..the fight likely lasted a lot more)

the wiki just states: "Madoka apparently manages to defeat the witch, but at the expense of her own life"

The color of the sky is IMO not as relevant as Kyubey's explanation about the magical potential a girl posses. This potential, Kyubey states, is equivalent to the suffering/burden the girl shoulders.

Now, the Madoka from the first timeline has a normal life, loving family, good friends. As per Kyubey's explanation, her potential in this timeline should be fairly low, at least lower than Mami, who had lost her family before becoming a magical girl, and also lower than Homura, whose health was poor, has no friends, and probably has no family either (as hinted in the drama CD).

So there. There's really no way, IMO, that Madoka from this timeline could possibly beat Walpurgis, even at the cost of her own life.

Why do I keep seeing this get tossed around? Am I missing some part of that timeline that indicates a loss? Unless I am, I fail to see why people keep assuming she lost that fight.

Because if Madoka have defeated WN, she would have turned into a witch. The only way she won't turn into a witch is for Homura to shoot her soul gem before she turns or she goes out like Kyoko by self detonating her soul gem - neither happened in time line 1. If you can defeat and witch and die normally, that will make the witch system totally unreliable since the system was all about harvesting MGs by turning them into witches.

mm dunno if it was exactly 5 time lines need'd ..but i think they are mostly to show the development on madoka's power:

1) she dies w/o defeating Walpurgis (she loses)
2) she dies defeating walpurgis (double K.O.)
3) she defeates walpurgis but she and Homura become corrupted (they used all their magic , barely "wins")
4) she defeates walpurgis in 1 shot (she "wins")
5) she "defeats" walpurgis in 1 shot.. and also changes the rules od the universe (godess ending)

personally i think that if there is a "gap" in the timelines it would be between TL 3 and 4 and i dont think it would be much of a gap..mebe 1 more TL showing a corrupted Madoka (and an "ok" Homura) after defeating Walpurgis?.

something that interested me is TL4 .. in that TL Madoka was strong enough to 1-shot walpurgis ..but she still turns into a witch.. so she is capable of defeating walpurgis since TL 2..but she has to burn herself out (corruption) in order to do so.. is of interest to me that in TL5 she ALSO becomes a witch (taking the despair/corruption from all the MGs)..but the nature of her wish prevents her to stay as a witch. (she said "my wish is to erase every witch.. if that is fulfilled i have no reason to feel despair" and proceed'd to destroy her own corrupted gem soul)

found:

Spoiler for Ep 10 Time Lines:

Time line 4 can be the sum of all the timelines where Homura trying to find a way out. The fact that it says she has defeated countless witches and her ability as a MG is drastically improved going from time line 3 to 5 hints toward quite a lot of repetition. Think it as the endless night loop for time line 4 - everything is similar with some slight difference and keep on looping. Endless night was looped something like almost 16000 times. That also explains Madoka's dream about Homura in time line 5 as it is most likely a residue memory from time loop.

Also, there is no way for Homura to see countless MGs die if there was only the 5 timelines. Cause the number of MGs that she saw die can be counted easily. This is words from her and no QB's deduction.

The power level of Madoka improved from TL1 where she is not strong enough to defeat WN, TL2, barely able to defeat WN but immediately turn into witch, to TL 4 where she was able to one shot WN and stated by QB to have the power to destroy earth. The power level increase is merely from WN level to a being that is capable of destroying a planet, this is a far cry from destroying and recreating a universe where the scale of power is almost unfathomable. Thus to jump from a planet buster to godhood that can destroy and create universes does not seem logical at all given the previous shown power ups from TL 1 to TL 4. The only rational explanation would be TL 4 is really a representation of infinite timelines that eventually build up enough power/energy to allow Madoka to have the power to make her wish in TL 5 or rather Final Time Line.

The color of the sky is IMO not as relevant as Kyubey's explanation about the magical potential a girl posses. This potential, Kyubey states, is equivalent to the suffering/burden the girl shoulders.

Now, the Madoka from the first timeline has a normal life, loving family, good friends. As per Kyubey's explanation, her potential in this timeline should be fairly low, at least lower than Mami, who had lost her family before becoming a magical girl, and also lower than Homura, whose health was poor, has no friends, and probably has no family either (as hinted in the drama CD).

So there. There's really no way, IMO, that Madoka from this timeline could possibly beat Walpurgis, even at the cost of her own life.

This is true as far as the relation between MG power and personal suffering goes. QB's explanation seems to refer to something else: a relation between that power and public suffering. QB says, "One's potential as a Puella Magi depends on the misfortune she's destined to carry. / It was incomprehensible to me why Madoka who had an ordinary life, / not one of a queen of a country or a savior had such an amount of suffering concentrated around her." QB explains what he means by Madoka"s "ordinary life" via the contrast between that life and the life of "a queen of a country or a savior;" the latter are public figures, standing in relation to whole societies and the suffering of multitudes, while Madoka in her "ordinary life" is simply a private person, whose circle is limited to herself, her family, and her friends. QB appears to be saying that MG power is amplified by the quantity of people and the accumulation of their individual misfortune to whom the MG is related. Thus, Madoka has unspeakable amounts of power since Homura has tied the accumulated misfortune of the entire populations of whole timelines to her.

So I don't think QB is talking here about the intensity of personal suffering as a source of MG power. After all, Madoka possesses her extraordinary capacity for magical power without herself experiencing suffering at all. (However, I think we can reasonably assume that intensity of suffering correlates to a greater amount of misfortune and hence signifies a greater degree of power, so quantity of personal suffering certainly matters.)

If this interpretation is true, then we can do a ranking of the girls by their relation to public misfortune. I would put Kyoko first, since she bears the misfortune of the deaths of her family and of the sufferings of her father's religious community (although she forms her wish before that situation goes south, so I'm not sure if she can derive power from those later events.) Next is Mami, with the death of her parents, followed by Homura, with her own individual tragedy, with the end being brought up by Sayaka, who has no tragedy that we know of to speak of. I suppose this ranking roughly fits what we see in the anime: there is not really enough evidence to argue it out in detail.

If QB wants to contract with someone with outsize magical potential, where potential is defined in relation to public misfortune, one wonders why he is targeting Japanese school girls rather than princesses or daughters of plutocrats or such like. The precis of human history QB shows Madoka suggests in fact he does seek out public figures, if Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, and Himeko are representative of his targets. I suppose these sort of historical figures are exceptional, and that in normal times, QB has to take what he can get at Japanese high schools...

^ A simple reason, how many political members (princess+daughters of important figures) behave like normal highschool girls? They are educated early to prepare them for the necessary maturity needed for their station. The fact that historical Puella Magi were created was usually in desperate times which thrust them unprepared into their stations of power.

As far as I understand it, both a girl's potential based on suffering (public or not - the idea's interesting, but I can't quite embrace it yet) and her wish influences her actual powers. Now, the first factor adds up for the first three timelines (speaking figuratively, one could put it as the level of Madoka's suffering is multuplied by the number of timelines). The wish, in the other hand, remains the same, which may be why the results we see don't vary that much. In the first timeline Madoka dies, fighting WN unassisted (I have a bad feeling that Mami might have actually died while her attention was shifted to trying to keep Homura safe ). In TL2, she's a bit stronger and assisted by two Puella Magi - and since we never saw Mami's body, it's not too farfetched to suggest Madoka was the only victim. After the second potential add-up, her chances in the same conditions could have been bigger... But Mami goes down, leaving only Homura to assist... And the events of the timeline must have influenced Madoka's emotional state and her Soul Gem's despair accumulation. In the end, both girls are KO'd (one might wonder why after learning the possible outcome if Soul Gem overuse they didn't stock up on grief seeds... Maybe there were no witches left before WN, or Madoka no longer could fight them properly, knowing their origins?).
Now, TL4. Why a one hit KO? I imagine that the add-up in suffering was significantly bigger this time - it's one thing to lose your friend/mentor in heroic battle die yourself in the same battle, and another to learn who you are, who you've been fighting and who you're meant to become unless you die. Plus her friends dying in a matter of hours, one of them killed by her own hands. Then goes her wish - whether it was to save Homura, save the world or defeat Walpurgis (although in the latter case her actual potential would no longer matter, and there would be no reason for Kyuubey to sound amazed), it was apparently larger scale than saving a cat.
And why instant witch? Maybe her heart was already burdened by some loss (suh as her family falling victims to the mayhem WN caused - and we still don't know how Madoka got into the barrier when she was supposed to be in the shelter). Or maybe the poor inexperienced girl burnt her magic, unleashing everything she had - she battled a superstrong witch right after contracting, and I bet the white twerp didn't even bother tl warn her about the soul gem darkening issue.
And finally, the last add-up. After jumping at the call and believing that "someone like me can change it all", then feeling the painful price for that change. Actually, we might have to increase the numbers for TL3 add-up as well - in general, doesn't turning into a witch count as serious suffering? Madoka did it TWICE.
Concerning the number of timelines... The episode gives us a strong impression of straight continuity. After TL1 Homura, the new PM in the block, approaches Madoka in a festive mood. After TL2, she wakes up downright shocked and tries to reveal the truth to others. After TL3, she wakes up with a steel, determined look - the promise given to a dying friend and having had to mercy kill her does that to you. And after TL4... This transfer gives most impressions of skipped timelines; but was Madoka able to dream about ANY random timeline, or about the previous one only? No one can say for sure.

As far as I understand it, both a girl's potential based on suffering (public or not - the idea's interesting, but I can't quite embrace it yet) and her wish influences her actual powers.

I'm not sure about the wish. Madoka from timeline 1 wished to heal a cat (from the drama cd) and so did Madoka from timeline 2 and 3, most likely, since Homura wasn't trying to stop Madoka from contracting yet in those timelines.

I think the wish may define the nature of a magical gir's power (ie: Sayaka gets fast recovery because she wished to heal Kamijo) but not the amount of power, the potential. The latter is defined by the suffering/burden they shoulder, like QB explained. And no, I don't think it has to be public. QB talks about a Karmic balance, implying there's a sort of equivalent exchange between suffering/burden and power. Madoka acquires more potential because her suffering from previous timelines (seeing her friends dying, the battle with Walpurgis, etc) adds to her burden in subsequent timelines, as the timelines are tied together with her at the center, and so she becomes potentially more powerful.

Anyway, my point stands. Madoka from timeline 1 is not even close to be strong enough to defeat Walpurgis, IMO.

Until now I had the opinion that more than 5 loops were necessary.
But then I thought, if that were true, then Homura would definitely have been aware that keeping Sayaka from making a contract was as important as stopping Madoka. And yet, she herself admits she did not do it, that she wasn't careful. That suggests that Sayaka forming a contract and being a risk to Madoka's "safety" did not occur in previous timelines (eventhough she did contract in other timelines, Sayaka did not become a reason Madoka made a contract).
If more than 5 loops had occurred, then the probability of Homura meeting a similar scenario are high. IMHO...